For the love of making

When I was writing a lot of project articles for bead and craft magazines, I had a pattern: I would spend a week or so working out the design ideas, develop and write the project for the magazine, and then spend a few more weeks playing with the ideas, making additional samples in varying sizes, colors, patterns, etc. In this way, I would make a lot of work that I sold at craft fairs or put on consignment in the galleries I worked with. But over some time, when I looked back at my entire body of work, it always felt unfocused because of the variety of styles/techniques and design.

On the other hand, since 2007, when I developed my “lines” and my catalog for my wholesale business, much of that playful exploration and production of variety was necessarily curtailed. When you do production work, you stick pretty close to what the customer thinks they ordered.

I made all the (20) projects and variations for Perfectly Paired between February and July last year. At that pace, there was no time to fully explore and have fun with any of those design concepts.

Since the retail world is very slow right now thanks to the economy, I have once again had some of that fun time. Time to take some of the design concepts I developed for the book and use them to make things for the love of making them. These are some of the things that will be showing up on my Etsy pages. I hope you enjoy them!